Many online services require users to have accounts with the services in order to use the services in a meaningful way. For example, most online shopping services, content collaboration services, content management services, and social networking services require that users create an account with the services before being able to use the services.
Some online service accounts are “free” accounts. A free account does not require the user to pay a monetary amount to the operator of the online service in order to use the service (e.g., as a periodic subscription fee, by purchasing a license, etc.). Other online service accounts require monetary payment. Typically, in exchange for a greater level of service provided by the online service to the user (e.g., more storage space, more features, better support, etc.). Whether a pay account or a free account, an online service account for a user (referred to hereinafter as just a “user account”) is often associated with an electronic mail address (e-mail address) for the user. The e-mail address may also be used by the user to send and receive electronic mail messages (e-mail messages), possibly via another online service such as, for example, and Internet e-mail service.
Online services may use e-mail addresses for purposes other than to communicate with users via e-mail. For example, an e-mail address may be used to uniquely identify the user. Using e-mail addresses to identify users is useful for online services because e-mail addresses, by virtue of the domain name part, are globally unique. For example, in the e-mail address “bob@acme.com”, “bob” is the local part of the e-mail address and “acme.com” is the domain name part of the e-mail address and the “@” symbol separates the local part from the domain name part. An online service may use the e-mail address “bob@acme.com” to uniquely identify a user account held with the online service.
In many cases, users create an account with online services using an e-mail address that “belongs” to someone else. For example, the e-mail address may belong to another person or belong to an organization, company, school, government, or other entity that has registered to use the Internet domain of the e-mail address. For example, the Internet domain “acme.com” may belong to Acme Corporation by virtue of the Acme Corporation registering, with an accredited domain name registrar, the name “acme” within the “.com” top-level Internet domain. In this case, the e-mail address “bob@acme.com” belongs to Acme Corporation even though an employee of Acme Corporation may use the e-mail address with the permission of the Acme Corporation to send and receive e-mail messages.
Throughout this description, a person or entity that is the direct or indirect registrant of an Internet domain is referred to herein as an “owner” of the Internet domain and, consequently, the owner of all e-mail addresses, whether currently in use or not, that have that Internet domain in the domain name part of the e-mail address. A direct registrant of an Internet domain is the person or entity that registers the Internet domain with an accredited domain name registrar. An indirect registrant is any person or entity that has permission from the direct registrant to operate the Internet domain. For example, an indirect registrant may have the right to add, remove, and update Domain Name Service (DNS) records (e.g., CNAME records, MX records, etc.) for the Internet domain or to transfer the Internet domain to another registrar.
It is often the case that an owner of an e-mail address is different than the person or entity that uses the e-mail address to send and receive e-mail messages. For example, Bob, an employee of Acme Corporation, may use the e-mail address “bob@acme.com” to send and receive e-mail messages. Bob may also use that e-mail address to create an account with a content management service that Bob uses to manage both personal and work files. However, the Acme Corporation may be the owner of the Internet domain “acme.com”. Thus, the Acme Corporation, and not Bob, owns the “bob@acme.com” e-mail address.
For a variety of reasons, owners of e-mail addresses (e.g., employers) may want to control how those e-mail addresses are used by users of online services in the context of using those services. In particular, an owner of an e-mail address may wish to stop a user from using the e-mail address as the user's identity with an online service. Alternatively, the owner may want to allow the user to continue using the e-mail address with the online service but only in the context of a user account with the online service that is under management or administration of the owner. The example embodiments disclosed herein provide a solution to these and other needs.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.